Interpersonal communication
Hoorcolleges
Lecture 1 31 Oktober 2019
The significance of IPC and non-verbal communication
The significance of interpersonal communication
IPC processes determine:
- Mutual understanding, agreement vs. disagreement, mutual relationship, achievement of
goals.
People with good interpersonal skills have:
- less stress, higher self-efficacy
- more satisfaction in intimate relationships
- more friends, less depression/ loneliness/ anxiety
Interventions and advice
- communication within companies (internal comm)
- communication companies with costumers (bv. Webcare)
- healthcare: doctor-patient communication, e-health
Own effectivity
Fundamental aspects of interpersonal communication
The source-receiver model (bowling)
Transactional model (ongoing process). Transactive, cooperative/ collaboration, ongoing process,
adapting create mutual meaning.
Coordinated management of meaning
Conversation as:
- Transactive
- Joint action
- Interdependence, reciprocity
- Interpretations about meanings and intentions on both sides
- Much is left unsaid
Interpretations
Both parties have own thoughts about the conversation. What I want/ mean/ think/ know/ feel
versus What does he want/ mean/ think/ know/ feel? Plays a role on conversation- and relationship
level.
Language is ambiguous (dubbelzinnig)!
Misinterpretations
Nonverbal behavior
How do we understand each other?
It’s a common misperception that language use has primarily to do with words and what they
mean. It does not. It has primarily to do with people and what they mean. It is essentially about
speaker’s intentions.
How do we come to understand each other’s intentions?
,Important topics in IPC:
- Common ground
- Perspective taking (own perspective vs. the other’s)
- Egocentrism vs. the third story
- Self-disclosure
- Nonverbal behavior: haptics, kinesics, posture, gaze etc.
- (non)verbal dominance: turn taking (interrupting, silences)
- Questioning (open vs. closed, leading, probing)
- Reflecting, reinforcement
- Listening
- Response styles: assertiveness vs. aggression
- Constraints and affordances of different media
- Media richness
- Social presence
How do we understand each other’s intentions?
- Influence of context
- Influence of the behavior of conversation partners
- Influence of the medium
Context and mutual understanding
Context dimensions:
- Set induction
- Physical environment
- Temporal factors
- Social psychological factors
• Interpersonal relationship (roles, status, history)
• Communication history (common ground)
- Culture
- Type of situation (scripts, event schemas)
Behavior and mutual understanding
Behavior of conversation partners determines the course of conversations
- Interdependence!
The medium and mutual understanding
Medium determines which (interactive) behavior is possible, which signals go back and forth.
Nonverbal communication
Purposes of nonverbal communication
- Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
- Regulating conversations
- Conveying personal and social identity
- Contextualizing interaction
- Negotiating relationships
,Negotiating communication
Nonverbal communication. Nonconscious Mimicry, copy the other’s acts.
Nonverbal behavior Mimicry
Occurs automatically (unconscious, no awareness, uncontrollable)
With more mimicry: interaction experienced as more pleasant, interaction partner judged as nicer
(if complementary). Converging vs. diverging.
- Perceiving an action activates motor readiness to perform the same action.
Body postures
Nonverbal complementarity
What happens with power related nonverbal behavior?
Mimicry of complementarity? →
- Dominant body posture; taking up a lot of space (postural expansion)
- Submissive body posture: taking up little space, make yourself smaller (postural
constriction)
Participants tend to spontaneously take complementary body posture:
Confederate dominant→ participant adopts submissive posture and the other way around.
With similarity in posture (mimicry), interaction is experienced as relatively unpleasant.
Negotiating hierarchy
Nonverbal ‘status’ position, ‘hierarchy’.
Submissive:
- Hedges (sort of, maybe)
- Hesitations
- Tag questions (don’t you/ toch?)
- Higher vocal pitch, low volume
- Turn taking: not interrupting
- Eye gaze: divert
It also depends on personality and context
- Persons with high (vs. low) ‘personality dominance’ behave more dominantly (more
speaking time) when they are in a low power position.
Prolong eye contact (vs. gaze aversion): a sign of dominance
- Gaze contest
Negotiating hierarchy: eye contact
Prolong eye contact vs. gaze aversion
Dispositionally dominant persons ‘automatically lock eyes’ wit hangry faces
- Faces presented subliminally (outside awareness) on computerscreen
- Participants with a dominant personality take longer to look away from angry faces
Lecture 2 1 November 2019
Non-verbal communication and deception (bedrog)
Purposes of nonverbal communication
- Replacing complementing and modifying verbal communication
, - Regulating conversations
- Conveying personal and social identity
- Contextualizing interaction
- Negotiating relationships
Nonverbal communication: conveying personal and social identity
Leaving an impression on others:
- Often unconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable
- Conscious, strategic use of nonverbal behavior/ signals
Facial appearance and social judgment
- Attractiveness
• Symmetry
• Averageness
• Tests and demos?
- Attractiveness bias:
• Symmetrical and average face
• Judged as more likeable, socially competent, outgoing, intelligent and healthy
- Halo effect:
• Initial positive evaluation of a person induces more positive evaluations of other
characteristics
- Baby-face bias:
• Round face, large eyes, small jawbones, high forehead, small chin
• Rated as more naïve, sweet, weak, honest, helpless, kind, less competent and less
dominant
Facial features are linked to judgments of personality
Judgments are made very quickly. High consensus (pos. correlation) among judges
Our brain categorizes faces automatically
NB: perceptions reflect visual stereotypes, not real personality characteristics.
- Facial expressions not linked to personality, yet some studies suggest some accuracy in
personality judgments.
Significant difference score in rating of observers (seeing only composite face) between high vs. low
face, only for conscientiousness and extraversion and mainly for female faces.
- Real world consequences: discrimination (faceism)
• More likely to vote for politicians who look competent, to invest in people who look
trustworthy.
- Physically attractive:
• Higher grades, more successful when applying for job, lower punishment in lawsuits,
receive help more quickly and more likely elected
- Baby-face:
• More often innocent in lawsuits, but not when it comes to negligence
- Social categorization and stereotypes: prejudice and discrimination based on gender, age,
ethnicity, religion, body, weight etc.
Stereotypes and behavior
- Facial features (skin color) activate stereotypes
- Stereotypes subtly influences our interpersonal behavior
Hoorcolleges
Lecture 1 31 Oktober 2019
The significance of IPC and non-verbal communication
The significance of interpersonal communication
IPC processes determine:
- Mutual understanding, agreement vs. disagreement, mutual relationship, achievement of
goals.
People with good interpersonal skills have:
- less stress, higher self-efficacy
- more satisfaction in intimate relationships
- more friends, less depression/ loneliness/ anxiety
Interventions and advice
- communication within companies (internal comm)
- communication companies with costumers (bv. Webcare)
- healthcare: doctor-patient communication, e-health
Own effectivity
Fundamental aspects of interpersonal communication
The source-receiver model (bowling)
Transactional model (ongoing process). Transactive, cooperative/ collaboration, ongoing process,
adapting create mutual meaning.
Coordinated management of meaning
Conversation as:
- Transactive
- Joint action
- Interdependence, reciprocity
- Interpretations about meanings and intentions on both sides
- Much is left unsaid
Interpretations
Both parties have own thoughts about the conversation. What I want/ mean/ think/ know/ feel
versus What does he want/ mean/ think/ know/ feel? Plays a role on conversation- and relationship
level.
Language is ambiguous (dubbelzinnig)!
Misinterpretations
Nonverbal behavior
How do we understand each other?
It’s a common misperception that language use has primarily to do with words and what they
mean. It does not. It has primarily to do with people and what they mean. It is essentially about
speaker’s intentions.
How do we come to understand each other’s intentions?
,Important topics in IPC:
- Common ground
- Perspective taking (own perspective vs. the other’s)
- Egocentrism vs. the third story
- Self-disclosure
- Nonverbal behavior: haptics, kinesics, posture, gaze etc.
- (non)verbal dominance: turn taking (interrupting, silences)
- Questioning (open vs. closed, leading, probing)
- Reflecting, reinforcement
- Listening
- Response styles: assertiveness vs. aggression
- Constraints and affordances of different media
- Media richness
- Social presence
How do we understand each other’s intentions?
- Influence of context
- Influence of the behavior of conversation partners
- Influence of the medium
Context and mutual understanding
Context dimensions:
- Set induction
- Physical environment
- Temporal factors
- Social psychological factors
• Interpersonal relationship (roles, status, history)
• Communication history (common ground)
- Culture
- Type of situation (scripts, event schemas)
Behavior and mutual understanding
Behavior of conversation partners determines the course of conversations
- Interdependence!
The medium and mutual understanding
Medium determines which (interactive) behavior is possible, which signals go back and forth.
Nonverbal communication
Purposes of nonverbal communication
- Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
- Regulating conversations
- Conveying personal and social identity
- Contextualizing interaction
- Negotiating relationships
,Negotiating communication
Nonverbal communication. Nonconscious Mimicry, copy the other’s acts.
Nonverbal behavior Mimicry
Occurs automatically (unconscious, no awareness, uncontrollable)
With more mimicry: interaction experienced as more pleasant, interaction partner judged as nicer
(if complementary). Converging vs. diverging.
- Perceiving an action activates motor readiness to perform the same action.
Body postures
Nonverbal complementarity
What happens with power related nonverbal behavior?
Mimicry of complementarity? →
- Dominant body posture; taking up a lot of space (postural expansion)
- Submissive body posture: taking up little space, make yourself smaller (postural
constriction)
Participants tend to spontaneously take complementary body posture:
Confederate dominant→ participant adopts submissive posture and the other way around.
With similarity in posture (mimicry), interaction is experienced as relatively unpleasant.
Negotiating hierarchy
Nonverbal ‘status’ position, ‘hierarchy’.
Submissive:
- Hedges (sort of, maybe)
- Hesitations
- Tag questions (don’t you/ toch?)
- Higher vocal pitch, low volume
- Turn taking: not interrupting
- Eye gaze: divert
It also depends on personality and context
- Persons with high (vs. low) ‘personality dominance’ behave more dominantly (more
speaking time) when they are in a low power position.
Prolong eye contact (vs. gaze aversion): a sign of dominance
- Gaze contest
Negotiating hierarchy: eye contact
Prolong eye contact vs. gaze aversion
Dispositionally dominant persons ‘automatically lock eyes’ wit hangry faces
- Faces presented subliminally (outside awareness) on computerscreen
- Participants with a dominant personality take longer to look away from angry faces
Lecture 2 1 November 2019
Non-verbal communication and deception (bedrog)
Purposes of nonverbal communication
- Replacing complementing and modifying verbal communication
, - Regulating conversations
- Conveying personal and social identity
- Contextualizing interaction
- Negotiating relationships
Nonverbal communication: conveying personal and social identity
Leaving an impression on others:
- Often unconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable
- Conscious, strategic use of nonverbal behavior/ signals
Facial appearance and social judgment
- Attractiveness
• Symmetry
• Averageness
• Tests and demos?
- Attractiveness bias:
• Symmetrical and average face
• Judged as more likeable, socially competent, outgoing, intelligent and healthy
- Halo effect:
• Initial positive evaluation of a person induces more positive evaluations of other
characteristics
- Baby-face bias:
• Round face, large eyes, small jawbones, high forehead, small chin
• Rated as more naïve, sweet, weak, honest, helpless, kind, less competent and less
dominant
Facial features are linked to judgments of personality
Judgments are made very quickly. High consensus (pos. correlation) among judges
Our brain categorizes faces automatically
NB: perceptions reflect visual stereotypes, not real personality characteristics.
- Facial expressions not linked to personality, yet some studies suggest some accuracy in
personality judgments.
Significant difference score in rating of observers (seeing only composite face) between high vs. low
face, only for conscientiousness and extraversion and mainly for female faces.
- Real world consequences: discrimination (faceism)
• More likely to vote for politicians who look competent, to invest in people who look
trustworthy.
- Physically attractive:
• Higher grades, more successful when applying for job, lower punishment in lawsuits,
receive help more quickly and more likely elected
- Baby-face:
• More often innocent in lawsuits, but not when it comes to negligence
- Social categorization and stereotypes: prejudice and discrimination based on gender, age,
ethnicity, religion, body, weight etc.
Stereotypes and behavior
- Facial features (skin color) activate stereotypes
- Stereotypes subtly influences our interpersonal behavior
